What are people’s thoughts on Udemy

Soldato
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I’ve had a few adverts for Udeny pop up in my Facebook feed recently and one or two pique my interest.

I work away 2 nights a week on average and have evenings to kill in hotels. Now computer games and Prime Video is ok but I thought about something more useful.

Apwhat are people’s thoughts on Udemy? Are they worth £10 a course?
 
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I did a couple of agile courses which were free. HUKD members usually post some freebie courses but yes others are good for the price. It's useful but it's what you put in to get out that matters.
 
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I've only used it once for the TOGAF Foundation course which was on offer. Actually been looking at the CCSP content recently but i'm not willing to pay large prices when there is so much free content available elsewhere.
 
Soldato
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Depending on the course yes. We've used a couple of Cisco related ones at work (ISE and general CCNP) and they're useful. It's not going to make you an expert but will give you a good understanding of something (again course dependant). What do you want to learn?
 
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You will need to plan ahead and research the course. Some of them offer freebies of sections you can check out.

I have a handful of courses I bought for 10-15 quid years ago that get updated every now and again to work with new tools/tech and to freshen them up.
So I can learn at my leisure.

Some courses are never touched after release so will loose value to you if you only have a few hours a week to learn and they get outdated.

Some of the courses have massive base prices (>200 quid) and then are on offer for 10-15 for large chunks of the year. As above though most stuff these days can be learned for free with a bit of time and effort. Udemy just collates and presents it nicely.
 

Ev0

Ev0

Soldato
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Also heard from content creators on other platforms like Pluralsight that a lot of the Udemy courses are plagarised from other sources.

I'd look at Pluralsight as an alternative.
 
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All these sites have plagarised content from all the other sites they just go around in circles.
It takes 10 minutes to download some stuff, create an account and then reupload as your own.
That is why you look at the courses, the reviews and the content.
When the author is krishna based in delhi and the video clearly shows a bald white guy with a posh kent accent your probably safe to assume its ripped off.
 
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I have done loads of courses on Udemy (never pay more than £11.99 as they will have a "sale" almost every other day).

Mainly computer programming and I always stick with the content providers that are genuine (like Academind for example).
Some courses are just an hour long - these are a total rip off!

It's like anything you do on the internet - check feedback for any course and then check the example videos.

Currently doing a JavaScript course by Academind that cost me £10.99 and has over 45 hours of content - all of it useful.
 
Soldato
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Thanks for your responses, might not bother if reductions are fairly regular. Might see how I get on with other sources first and see what info on good courses exist.
 
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I took one of the compound Excel courses for £10 (Beginner, Inter, Advanced, VBA), just to brush up and learn a few new tricks. 195 lectures, around 4-10 minutes each - 16 hours worth of content total. As said above, and echoing my experience, it won't make you an expert but I found it a really useful resource. And the short lectures / sections made it very flexible.

For the price, it was well-presented and worth it.

Overall, quality is variable though - so just due your due diligence and look for courses with good take-up and reviews.
 
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Caporegime
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I have done loads of courses on Udemy (never pay more than £11.99 as they will have a "sale" almost every other day).

Mainly computer programming and I always stick with the content providers that are genuine (like Academind for example).
Some courses are just an hour long - these are a total rip off!

It's like anything you do on the internet - check feedback for any course and then check the example videos.

Currently doing a JavaScript course by Academind that cost me £10.99 and has over 45 hours of content - all of it useful.
If you don't mind me asking, what did you learn about JavaScript that isn't freely available via Google?

Just curious.

Or to phrase another way, how did it help you learn JavaScript (assuming there's nothing on there that isn't public domain info).

Horses for courses and all that, and I'm interested to know what the benefit is.
 
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Udemy is just a publisher like YouTube. They on,y check the video quality, not the content so make sure you check the reviews. Be wary though as most instructors will give free codes for reviews. There are some gems but there’s an awful lot of crap.

also they have sales as often as dis.

I speak as a former course creator
 
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I did Chris Anderson's CCNA course which had videos, PDF flash cards and GNS3/packet tracer lab exercises and it only worked out at £15, which I thought was good value. But yes, be careful as there is some crap too.
 
Caporegime
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Apwhat are people’s thoughts on Udemy? Are they worth £10 a course?

It's just a platform - there are any number of independent course providers - whether they're worth it depends on the course/provider.

Some platforms have a bit more control - at one end of the scale you have the likes of Udacity that puts together their own "nanodegrees" with select external providers (companies and universities).

Then you have coursera and edx that vary a bit more in terms of courses, course structure (some "specialisations" to rival "nanodegrees" but lots of standalone courses) but are still from big external providers.

Then you have the likes of udemy and whatever you can find on YouTube - pretty much open to anyone who wants to teach something...

so just check what you're buying/read reviews etc..
 
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If you don't mind me asking, what did you learn about JavaScript that isn't freely available via Google?

Just curious.

Or to phrase another way, how did it help you learn JavaScript (assuming there's nothing on there that isn't public domain info).

Horses for courses and all that, and I'm interested to know what the benefit is.

Problem with learning by Google is that if you don't know javeScript can do a specific thing, how are you going to look it up?
The course goes over all aspects of javaScript so you know what to actually look up in Google in the future.

Ironically, my job is actually writing web based products (kind of).

I learnt javaScript (well jQuery really) on the job.
Just decided to do the course out of pure curiosity to see what I actually know vs what I don't.

A lot of it I did know but there was quite a bit I didn't (mainly because we have to use Internet Explorer (spit) which doesn't actually support the newer javaScript stuff).

The main thing is, it's a course by Academind. If it was anyone else, I wouldn't have bothered. These guys are awesome at explaining stuff programmer to programmer.
The other advantage is that you can ask the instructors questions and get a reply - well the good instructors will.

As I go along the course, I make notes in OneNote so by the end of the course, I have a reference document allowing me to look stuff up in a way that I understand.

And, i actually enjoy taking these courses!
I have done PHP, CSS, jQuery, AngularJs, Angular 2 and a few others, all of them purely out of curiosity (although we are moving to Angular 2 in the near future at work).
For £10/11.99 each, seems a bargain to me.
 
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Oh, one other trick to find good Udemy Content is look to see what subjects the author has also created courses on. Udemy make available the hot course topics so you tend to find that people make courses on popular topics, rather then what they are an expert in.
 
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